~Cami~
He’s back.
I take a deep, cleansing breath and push my hands through my blond hair, scrutinizing my makeup. I don’t wear much, and I’m certainly not as talented with it as my best friend, Addie, but it’ll do. My green eyes are accentuated nicely, lips are pink, and heart is beating faster than ever.
“You’ve known him your whole life. It’s not like he’s new,” I remind myself in the mirror. “You’re just going over to say hi. It’s no big deal.”
I don’t look convinced, so I narrow my eyes and lean in. “He’s just an old friend. Suck it up, buttercup.”
Landon is my other best friend, Mia’s older brother. Addie, Mia, and I grew up together, and I’ve been in love with Landon for as long as I can remember. God, one look at him usually sends the giant birds in my stomach into overdrive. He’s handsome—understatement of the year—and sweet and . . . damn.
I’m ridiculous.
I shake my head at my reflection and turn away to grab my purse and set out to Landon’s parents’ place, where he’s been staying since arriving home a few days ago. Landon was in the Navy since he graduated from college. He was a pilot, until an accident a few months ago that resulted in him ejecting from the plane.
I’ve never felt fear like I did the day we received the call that he’d been hurt. And the past few months of him being on the other side of the world have been torture. I couldn’t see him to make sure he was okay. He had to recover, then go through the process of being discharged from the Navy before he could come home.
Thank God he’s back now. I gave him a couple of days to acclimate, but I just can’t stay away anymore. I need to see him.
And I’m nervous as hell.
I park at the curb by his parents’ house, gather my courage about me, and walk up the sidewalk to the front door, knocking with more conviction than I feel.
There isn’t any movement in the house, making me frown. It’s early enough in the day that he should be home.
I knock again, and just when I’m about to give up and leave, the door is yanked open and there he is.
Half-naked.
Hair rumpled.
Eyes blurry.
Did I mention that he’s half freaking naked?
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice rough with sleep, snapping me out of my openmouthed stare.
“Were you still asleep?” I ask, squaring my shoulders and schooling my face to seem as though I see half-naked men every day.
Which I don’t. Certainly not tall, dark-haired men with ice-blue eyes and olive skin and washboard abs.
Jesus.
“It’s early,” he mumbles, and scrubs his hand over his face. He’s not asking me in. He doesn’t look happy to see me.
He hasn’t even hugged me, which probably isn’t a bad thing considering that he’s half-naked and I’d probably do something stupid like tackle him to the ground and molest him.
Down, girl.
“It’s not that early,” I point out, and he turns narrowed eyes on me and firms his jaw, and I realize that not only is he not thrilled that I’m here, he’s . . . irritated.
“I’m still shaking the jet lag,” he says. “What do you need, Cami?”
I take a small step back and shake my head. “I don’t need anything, Landon. I just wanted to stop by and say welcome home.”
“Thanks.” His voice is a little flat. I was not expecting this at all. Landon has always been welcoming, happy to see me. I don’t know what to do with this.
I do know one thing: I need to get out of here. I’m sorry I came.
“I’m sorry that I woke you up,” I murmur, my eyes on my feet as I turn away. “I’ll see you.”
“Cami,” he says, but I don’t stop to see what he’s about to say. My fight-or-flight reflex has kicked in, and all I can think is Get out of here.
“How embarrassing,” I mutter, fighting tears. “Why would he want to see you, Cami? You’re just his little sister’s friend.”
But it wasn’t always that way. Back in the day, we were friends. He and I always got along well, and I refuse to believe that it was just because of Mia. We had things in common, and we had conversations. And when he left for the Navy, he left a hole in my life that I tried to fill with a mistake of a marriage.
I miss him. I’ve missed him for years. And now he’s home and he doesn’t want me?
I’ll just have to learn to live with that. Besides, it’s not like I can claim that I know him well. Ten years away is a long time. He only came home once a year, and after I got married, he stopped contacting me because he said it wasn’t appropriate to continue to communicate with a married woman.
Divorced or not, why would I think that he’d suddenly be thrilled to see me and swoop me up in a tight hug, then want to share breakfast and conversation?
I sigh as I park in my driveway, kill the engine, and finally face the fact that despite our past, I don’t really know Landon anymore. I know the young man who left here long ago, and that’s not who he is anymore.
I’m not that girl anymore either.
I’ve been carrying a torch all these years for someone who doesn’t exist.
“Stupid,” I whisper, and slam my car door shut and climb the steps to my porch, unlock my door, and to my utter shock, see a gray-and-white streak run between my legs and into my house, then stop at the entrance to my kitchen, turn, and sit on its butt, as if he belongs here.
“Oh, no, you’ve got to go,” I say sternly. “Come on.” I gesture to the door, but the cat just blinks, then licks his tail twice before returning his gaze to me.
I’ve never seen this cat before in my life.
“Where did you come from?” I ask, propping my fists on my hips and giving the cat my best glare.
It doesn’t seem to bother him.
“You need to go,” I say, and march toward him. “Scoot. Outside.”
He simply runs out of my reach into the living room, watching me. “Meow.”
“No, you can’t stay,” I reply, as if I’m carrying on a conversation with the feline. “Seriously, I don’t like cats.”
“Meow.”
“Because they’re moody and snobby. I’m really a dog person,” I say, trying to reason with him. He flicks his tail and turns away from me. “Seriously, I’m not even allowed to have pets here. My landlord doesn’t allow it.”
Great. Now I’m lying to the cat. I own this house.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” I try, but the cat lies down on his back, exposing his belly, and stretches out on my expensive area rug, making himself at home.
“Meow.”
“You. Have. To. Go.” I clap my hands and move fast, trying to scare him out and through the open front door, but he runs in the opposite direction. “Seriously? You’re really starting to piss me off.”
“Meow.”
He jumps up on the back of my couch and crouches, watching to see what my next move will be so he can dodge it, I’m sure.
“I said outside,” I say, my voice heavy with authority.
Finally, he jumps down and runs through my legs, toward the front door, and when I turn around, there’s Landon, with a shirt on now, leaning against the doorjamb with a smirk on his face and the cat weaving through his legs, purring.
“What are you trying to do to your cat?” he asks as he leans down and scoops the terrorist into his arms.
“He’s not my cat,” I reply, and blow out a gusty sigh. “He ran in here and now I can’t get him to leave.”
“Smart cat,” he says, and scratches the feline’s head. Landon’s blue eyes are on mine as he closes the door and sits himself, and the cat, on my couch.
“By all means, both of you make yourselves at home.” I roll my eyes and push my fingers through my hair. “What do you want, Landon?”
I frown. My voice has never been this hard when I spoke to Landon before. It doesn’t sit well with me.
“I’m sorry, Cam,” he says softly, watching the cat as it curls up in his lap and purrs happily.
“No need,” I say, and sit on the love seat to the left of him. “I shouldn’t have come over without calling first.”
I trace the pattern in the fabric of the love seat, not wanting to meet Landon’s gaze. I’m still embarrassed, and disconcerted about the cat.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Landon says.
“I’m fine,” I reply. “I was just going to say hi. No big deal. I have some stuff to do, so if you could just take the cat outside with you when you go, I’d appreciate it.”
I stand and move to leave the room, but Landon catches my wrist in his hand to stop me. Since I was young, Landon’s always caught my wrist when he wanted to take a bite of whatever I was eating, or just to catch my attention. He’s a touchy-feely guy. I frown down into his face and my heart catches. His blue eyes are . . . sad.
And my arm is on fire from his touch.
“I really am sorry,” he says. “I’m just not myself these days.”
I gently tug my arm out of his grasp and sit back down, watching him. “Okay.”
“I didn’t want to come home,” he says as he pets the cat, currently purring happily as if he lives here. “I guess things are just weird right now. But that doesn’t mean I can snap at you. You’re the sweetest person I know.”
“You don’t know me anymore,” I murmur, remembering what I thought about in the car. Landon’s brow furrows, but then he nods.
“Maybe not. But I do know that you’re sweet, and I care about you, and I just wanted to say I’m sorry for being an ass.”
“Thank you.”
He looks over at me now and really looks at me, his eyes tracking me from head to toe, then finding mine again. “You look great.”
“Thank you,” I repeat, not knowing what else to say. I can see that he’s hurting, and maybe confused, and everything in me wants to scoop him up and pet him, like he’s the cat, to soothe him and comfort him.
But I can’t. It’s not my place. So I sit where I am, waiting for him to make the next move.
After a long minute, he stands, sets the cat on the floor, and walks to the door. “Thanks for stopping by, Cami,” he says, nods, and walks out.
I sigh and stare at the cat. “You’re not going to leave, are you?”
He simply jumps back up on the couch where Landon was just sitting, curls into a ball, and immediately goes to sleep.
“YOU’RE LATE,” I inform Riley, who just walked through my door with a bottle of wine and a grocery-store sack full of ice cream.
“Sorry,” she says as she hurries into the kitchen to stow away the ice cream and pop open the wine. “I got held up on a call with the Web designer. But I brought sugar and wine, so I should be forgiven. Besides, the show hasn’t started yet.”
I slap slices of pizza on plates for both of us, and we each take a plate and a glass to the living room and settle in for our date night.
Every week, Riley, another best friend of mine, and business partner, comes over and we watch our favorite shows back-to-back while eating bad food and drinking too much wine.
It’s tradition.
“Meow,” the cat says as he slinks into the room, his nose sniffing out the food.
“What the hell!” Riley says in surprise. “When did you get a cat?”
“I didn’t,” I reply as the opening credits for The Vampire Diaries begins. “He got me.”
“Huh?”
I explain how he ran in the house and refuses to leave. “So I bought him some food and a bed and some toys.”
“You got a cat,” Riley says, grinning.
“He got me,” I say again.
“What’s his name?”
“Scoot. Because he won’t scoot.”
“I think it’s awesome,” Riley says with a smile, and scratches Scoot’s ears, making him purr. “He’s so pretty.”
“And stubborn. He doesn’t listen. I tell him he can’t sleep on my bed, and he does it anyway. The only thing he does right is use the litter box.”
“He’s a cat,” she says with a shrug. “That’s what cats do.”
We settle in to eat and watch TV as Scoot jumps up on the back of the couch and curls into a ball to sleep and watch over us.
“I’m telling you,” Riley says as she sips her wine. “That Ian Somerhalder is going to eventually be my husband.”
“He’s already married,” I remind her, and watch as young vampires feed on innocent bystanders while also saving the town from evil.
It’s an amazing sort of irony.
“For him I could be a home wrecker,” she says thoughtfully. “I mean, look at him.”
“Sexy for sure,” I reply with a nod. “Except when he has blood dripping down his chin.”
“I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for having blood dripping down his chin,” she says with a smirk. “Unless he wanted to do me in the bathroom.”
“Ew,” I reply.
“You don’t like to do it in the bathroom?”
“No, the blood part. Ew.”
We giggle, then settle in to enjoy the rest of the show. When it’s over, I pause the DVR so we can clean up the pizza, refill our wine, and scoop ice cream. Because right after The Vampire Diaries is The Originals, an offshoot of The Vampire Diaries.
Just as I’m about to resume the TV, Riley says, “So, have you seen Landon?”
She’s not looking directly at me, and she says it as if she’s asking me if I’ve checked the weather forecast for tomorrow.
“I saw him the other day,” I reply. “Just for a minute.”
I really don’t want to get into it. The girls all know that I’ve crushed on Landon for years.
“Kat said he came into the restaurant the other day,” Riley says. Kat is the fifth friend of our group. The five of us co-own Seduction, a trendy restaurant in Portland. We’ve been open for almost a year, and business couldn’t be better.
“Did he?” I ask.
“She said he looks pretty good.”
No, he doesn’t. He’s sad and maybe scared, and it’s not my job to help him.
“Good for him.”
I press play and pretend to be engrossed in the show. When I’m finished with my ice cream, Scoot jumps down into my lap and curls up, but when I pet him, he hisses, so I leave him be.
“I know that Mia is glad that Landon’s home,” Riley says, and now I want to hiss at her.
“Why are we still talking about this?”
“Because you’re not saying anything,” she says.
“There’s nothing to say. He’s home.”
“And you love him,” she reminds me.
I shake my head. “I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t know him, Ri. I’ve carried a torch for a boy I used to know. A lot has happened.”
She’s frowning. “But it’s Landon.”
“I’m fine,” I say, exasperated. “It’ll be nice to see him once in a while, but I’m not a teenager, Riley.”
“Is it weird because of Brian?” she asks, making me frown.
“Why would it be weird because of Brian?” I’m deliberately being a pain in the ass. I don’t like to talk about this. It just makes me feel guilty and bad.
“Look, people get divorced all the time.” Riley’s voice is calm and matter-of-fact. “I’ll admit that being friends with your ex is odd, but people do it. I’ve heard.”
“Brian doesn’t have anything to do with Landon.”
“Well, given that they didn’t know each other before, and Brian’s not even from here, you wouldn’t think so. But I know differently.” Riley’s eyes are soft as she watches me. She’s the only one who knows all of the reasons that my marriage to Brian didn’t work.
And one of the reasons is Landon.
“I was young, and when I met Brian—”
“You were still hung up on Landon. I know.”
“But I didn’t marry Brian to spite Landon, Riley. That’s dumb. I did fall in love with Brian, and our relationship evolved naturally to marriage. It was the logical next step.”
“Logical,” she says with a nod.
I blow out a gusty breath. I don’t have to tell Riley that my marriage with Brian didn’t work because I’d never allowed myself to fall in love with him the way he deserved. That I’d been holding a piece of my heart aside for Landon.
Even though I knew that Landon wasn’t going to ever come back.
Except now he’s back, and I’m no kid, and I’m still so attracted to him that it’s silly.
“Can we not talk about this anymore and watch our show now?”
“Okay.” She doesn’t sound convinced, but I really don’t want to talk about Landon. When the show is over, we clean up and Riley leaves, and I climb the stairs to my bedroom. I don’t argue with Scoot when he jumps onto the bed and curls up behind my knees.
I’m not a teenager anymore. I failed in a marriage with a good man because I was hung up on Landon. It’s childish. It’s ridiculous.
It needs to stop now. It’s past time to move on with my life.
I LOVE OUR restaurant. We’ve worked our asses off for it. I walk through the dining room and stop to fuss over a centerpiece, enjoying the cozy color scheme and richness of the fabrics. It’s inviting. Sexy.
Everything about our place is sexy. We made sure of it. From the warm atmosphere to the aphrodisiacs on the menu, Seduction screams classy sex.
And I like to think that it mirrors the five women who own and run it.
I walk through to the wine bar that Kat runs and grin when I see her and Mia, our master chef, with their heads bent over wine goblets, sniffing deeply.
“It smells like wine,” Mia says.
“It smells like cherries and oak. It’s full-bodied.”
“Like me.” Mia smirks and pats her round hip. Mia may carry a few extra pounds, but she’s sexy as can be with it. Her long dark hair, usually worn up and under a hat, hangs in loose curls to her waist.
“I wish I had your curves,” I say as I join them. “What are you doing?”
“Kat’s trying to teach me how to smell wine.”
“How’s that going?”
“It smells like wine,” Mia says with a shrug.
“I give up,” Kat says with a frown, her red lips twisting in disgust.
“Kat, you’re the one that needs to know this stuff,” I remind her. “And you’re excellent at it.”
“Exactly,” Mia agrees, nodding. “You’re the wine expert. I’ll keep doing what I do in the kitchen.”
“Good plan,” Addie says, her heels clicking on the hardwood as she and Riley join us. Addie’s tall and rocks curves of her own. She’s the most fashionable person I know, and since she’s a former model, I’d expect nothing less.
“Kat, I just got off the phone with Leah, your new bartender. She’ll be here by three to start training.”
“Cool,” Kat says with a nod. “Not sure why she called the front of the house and not my cell.”
“She said she lost your number. She sounds a little—” Addie struggles to find the word.
“Not the brightest bulb in the shed?” Kat asks. “She’s a little dense, but she’s an excellent bartender, she’s adorable, and she doesn’t take shit from the customers who have had too much to drink. She comes highly recommended.”
“I totally trust your judgment,” Addie replies with a smile. “I’m just passing along the message.”
“Do not try to set her up with Brian,” Kat says, pointing her finger at me. “I mean it.”
“I would not do that,” I reply, as innocently as possible. “Like I would set people up with my ex-husband.” I can’t stop my lips from twitching.
“Right. Because you haven’t tried to set him up with every single woman you know, including us,” Mia replies, and rolls her eyes. “Finding dates for your ex is just weird.”
“For your information, he’s been finding his own dates lately,” I reply, and sniff haughtily. My ex-husband, Brian, is a good man, and I want him to find an awesome girl. He deserves that. I just wasn’t the girl for him, but we’re still good friends.
“Now that we’re all here,” I begin, changing the subject and opening the folder I brought in with me, “let’s talk about the expansion.”
“I can’t believe that we’re expanding already,” Riley says, eyeing Mia’s wine. “We’ve been open less than a year.”
“And we’re bursting at the seams,” I reply. “With Jake packing in crowds every weekend, and word spreading of what a fun, sexy place this is, our wait times are too long. I’ve made graphs and spreadsheets. Needing to expand isn’t a bad thing.”
“I agree,” Addie says with a nod. “And I think we’d be packing in people with or without Jake. Just don’t tell him I said that.”
Jake Knox is Addie’s husband, and a former rock star who’s been playing at Seduction on the weekends. His voice is pure sex, and is perfect for the atmosphere of our place.
“Oh God, she brought graphs,” Mia says, hanging her head in her hand. “This is all a foreign language to me.”
“I was able to talk the former owners next door down far enough that we can pay cash for the space,” I say, ignoring Mia, and pass around the report I typed up last night after Riley left and I couldn’t sleep. I’ve attached the graphs and spreadsheets to the back.
“We don’t have to take out a loan?” Kat asks, surprised. “That’s awesome.”
“You are such a great financial officer, Cami,” Mia says with a smile. “I used to hate your budgets, but it’s exactly what we needed.”
I grin. Mia’s disgust over my budgets was never a secret. The passionate chef has thrown many a spatula at my head when I told her she couldn’t have more money for extra truffles.
“Honestly, my only concern is time,” Addie says. “I don’t have time to oversee construction. I know that Mia practically lives in the kitchen, and with Kat running the bar and Riley dealing with marketing, who’s going to take the lead on this?”
“I agree, and honestly, now that Seduction is my only client, I have the time to take on the project.” I fold my hands over the folder and take a deep breath. As of two months ago, I closed my other CPA business and am now exclusively devoted to Seduction. Not that I wasn’t before, but a girl can handle working sixteen-hour days for only so long before she starts to go a little nutty.
“Are you sure?” Riley asks. “It’s going to be a busy few months.”
“I’m sure.”
“Awesome,” Mia says. “You and Landon will do a great job.”
“Excuse me?”
“Landon.” Mia grins and nods toward the entrance, where Landon is walking our way. “He’s taking the lead on the construction side.”
“Hi, ladies,” Landon says as he joins us. “I hear you have a project for me.”
“We have a construction crew we work with,” I sputter, but Mia just grins knowingly.
“Dad’s thinking of retiring, and Landon’s taking up some of the slack,” she says. “We’ll have the same crew, but Landon will be in charge of it.”
“Cami’s going to be in charge,” Addie informs him. “So anything you need, you just call her.”
“Great,” he replies, and I finally glance up at him only to find him watching me with those shining blue eyes. “I promise to go easy on you.”
I swallow and can’t help but laugh at the irony. Just when I’ve decided to keep my distance from Landon, he takes on the job that I’ll be working intimately on.
Murphy’s Law.
Fucking Murphy.